


Ugly Pancake Monday

by FalconFate



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avatar: The Last Airbender marathon, Bruce is Trying but he’s not perfect, Cuddles, Gen, Good Brother Jason Todd, Pancakes, Stress, Tired Dick Grayson, this was mostly catharsis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:48:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24139144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalconFate/pseuds/FalconFate
Summary: On those most heinous of weekdays, Monday, which so often seemed to go wrong, Dick Grayson had created a tradition: Ugly Pancake Monday.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Comments: 13
Kudos: 112





	Ugly Pancake Monday

Tradition in the household of one Richard John Grayson-Wayne would stop for no man, woman, or person, on-world or off, in sickness or in health. Even if, at that very moment, Darkseid himself, with all his armies of Apokolips, had rolled up to Dick’s apartment door and personally heralded the end times, Dick would give him a firm and resolute “fuck you” and shut the door right back in his flat, craggy face. 

Today, especially, Dick was taking no crap, attempted rationalization, or criticism, because if any Monday was an Ugly Pancake Monday, it was today’s Monday, after Dick had argued with Bruce, put salt in his coffee instead of sugar, seen an advertisement for a circus that would be in town in about a week (which might once have cheered him up a bit but instead had further fouled Dick’s mood with various feelings of melancholy and misery), fumbled with every paper file that crossed his desk at the precinct, and then disastrously ruined what should have been an easy bust down by the docks. 

It was Monday, Dick felt like utter crap; ergo, it was Ugly Pancake Monday.

He was too tired to go out and buy ingredients, and fortunately he still had half a box of instant pancake mix. Hardly bothering to change out of his Nightwing uniform beyond unzipping the top half to reveal the tank underneath and pulling a pair of sweats over his legs, he quickly grabbed a mixing bowl, pan, measuring cup, whisk, plate, and both of his spatulas, then turned up the stove as he began mixing the batter. 

When he was satisfied with the mix, he dropped a pat of butter on the pan and swirled it around, then poured on a reasonable amount of batter and waited to flip it. Idly, he worried at the edges of the batter circle with his flat spatula, trying to listen for the sound of a ‘done’ side… which was pointless, as he had never bothered to become a master chef who knew exactly when to flip a pancake. Going with his gut, Dick quickly slid the spatula under the pancake, lifted it—

—too soon, apparently, or perhaps too slow. Most of the middle bit of the pancake went spilling out onto the skillet, and it made a strange fold as he semi-succeeded in fully flipping the rest of it. Dick snorted in amusement; sometimes he managed to impress himself with how bad he was at pancakes. 

The structure of the pancake, though irregular, held through another flip as Dick made sure the topside of the batter that had spilled got a fair browning. Once he decided it was safe enough to eat, he dropped it onto the waiting plate and started on another.

Five pancakes later—each uglier and more deformed than the last, and maybe a little gooier than they should have been—Dick was beginning to run out of batter. He was eyeing his misshapen stack and considering making more when he heard the soft but tell-tale _squeak_ of his living room window sliding open, and then the muted _thud_ of steel-toed boots on his rug. Dick sighed heavily; there weren’t many people who wore steel-toed boots and could break into his apartment without triggering his alarms. 

“Jason,” he greeted as his brother rounded the corner into the kitchen.

Jason snorted, pulling down his hood and peeling off the mask that hid the lower half of his face. “Evening, Dickiebird,” he drawled amiably, leaning against one of Dick’s counters. He frowned at the stove, and his voice was wary as he asked, “…what the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m making pancakes,” Dick told him. “Want some?”

Jason’s eyebrows met his white-streaked hairline. “Dick. Dickface. Bigbird. Boy Blunder. You’re not making pancakes, you’re making _atrocities.”_

“It’s an Ugly Pancake Monday!” Dick snapped indignantly. “They’re edible!”

“Uh-huh. Budge over, Goldie,” Jason said firmly, elbowing Dick out of the way. “I heard through the Batvine you had a fight with Bruce, and, as the resident black sheep of this mixed pot of a family, I came to make sure you weren’t stealing my place. Now shoo. If you won’t shower, at least go change.”

Dick levelled his well-practiced Bat-glare on Jason, but the self-proclaimed black sheep had been on the receiving end of the original Bat-glare too many times for it to take proper effect. Jason simply smirked at Dick’s attempts and hitched his chin at the kitchen doorway.

“They’d better not be round, Jason,” Dick warned as he finally retreated. 

“Sure,” was Jason’s reply. 

“I mean it Little Wing! It’s Ugly Pancake Monday, and that means no pancake prettier than a mud puddle!”

“Just get a damn shower, Dickwad.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Dick had showered, shoved his Nightwing suit into the hidden compartment of his closet, and pulled on pajama pants and his baggiest sweatshirt—the one with the superman logo. 

Jason snickered when he saw it. “Bet the old man loves that.”

Dick sniffed as he climbed onto the stool at his kitchen counter. “I’ll wear a Bat sweatshirt when he apologizes.”

Jason let out a low whistle from across the high table. “What’d he even do? You usually forgive him pretty quick.” 

As he spoke, Jason was dishing up another (clean) plate of the ugliest, most deformed pancakes Dick had ever seen. Dick inspected them with his fork, checking for any perfections, and snorted at one that looked particularly reminiscent of a squashed bat face. It spared him answering for a minute, but Jason, for once, was patient. 

Finally, Dick sighed and said, “He wanted me to move back into the manor. Quit my job here and everything.”

Jason was silent. He had his own plate of pancakes, marginally less unsightly than Dick’s—the original so-called ‘atrocities’ were nowhere in sight—and he was picking at them, not pressing, but clearly waiting for Dick to elaborate. 

Dick took a bite of ( _holy fuck, these are good_ ) pancake and continued, “I get that he’s worried. That a lot has happened lately… I mean, just in the past _month,_ let alone the past few years. And the manor will always be home, you know? Bruce will always be my dad, you and Tim and Damian and all the others will always be my siblings, Alfred will always be Alfred, but I’ve built a _life_ here.” He gestured wildly to the apartment with his fork. “I have coworkers, my favorite crepe shop, my neighbor who I always carry groceries for. I’ve put down roots, as much as I’ve ever done. And it’s not like I’m halfway across the damn country in Coast City or L.A., you know? I’m not even two hours away, _with traffic._ I’m still gonna come over on weekends for Sunday brunch and hanging out with Dami. I’m not gone forever.” 

With every word that left Dick’s mouth, the knot of anxious nerves that had been tightly bundled in his chest loosened a bit, until he finally slumped in his seat, too tired to hold his head up. “But of course he argues, and argues, and argues some more just because he can, because he’s a stubborn shit and he raised all of us to be stubborn shits. And I _hate_ arguing with him, I really do, it never gets anywhere, and I’ve been off all day—Jay, you know what I did this morning?”

“Put salt in your coffee, I heard,” said Jason. “Babs regaled me with the fifteen paragraphs you texted her.”

 _“I put salt in my coffee!”_ Dick wailed anyway. Jason sighed, but let Dick carry on. “And then I saw an advertisement for the circus, and then I felt weirdly guilty because Bruce kind of has a point, you know? I’ve—I’ve lost so much already, we all have, and then the whole day after that should have just been _cancelled,_ I swear. Work was shitty, the bust at the docks went wrong in almost every possible way, and I _can't even make shitty pancakes right,”_ Dick sobbed, bracing his elbows on the counter and burying his face in his hands. 

After sobbing into his hands for nearly a minute, he wondered distantly if he’d managed to scare Jason away—but no sooner did he have the thought than strong, steady arms encircled Dick’s shoulders and pulled him against Jason’s broad chest, tucking his head neatly under Jason’s chin. “Take it from me, Big Bird,” Jason murmured, his hands rubbing soothing patterns across Dick’s back the way Dick always did for his little siblings, “making anything after a shitty day like that? I applaud your determination. I mean, you’re not _wrong,_ they were terrible, but you still tried. Isn’t that what matters?” Jason paused, then continued uncertainly, “…you usually have some sort of Uncle Iroh-type quote at this point, dontcha?”

Dick snickered wetly. _“It is usually best to admit mistakes when they occur, and to seek to restore honor,”_ he recited hoarsely. 

“Why am I surprised you can just rattle those off?” Jason grumbled. But he didn’t let go of Dick for several minutes, and continued with the nice, soothing circles, and didn’t protest when Dick leaned against him. 

Only when Dick’s stomach gurgled slightly, reminding him of why he’d declared it Ugly Pancake Monday in the first place, did Jason finally straighten up. 

“C’mon,” said Jason, “cartoons on the couch.” He swiped Dick’s plate and then his own, ignoring the subsequent squawk of protest, and meandered into the living room, depositing the plates on the coffee table. Jason then snagged the biggest, fluffiest blanket he could find and threw it across Dick’s shoulders when he came into range. “Get your butt on the couch, we haven’t done an Avatar marathon in months. Where were we, middle of book two?”

And that is how, without any more ceremony, Dick found himself curled up on his living room couch, snuggled into Jason and a thick fluffy blanket and eating the ugliest, most delicious easy-make pancakes he’d ever eaten, while on the screen, Zuko grumped his way through Ba Sing Se and Uncle Iroh made plans for a tea shop.

**Author's Note:**

> This was total catharsis. Admittedly, my day was not as bad as Dick’s, but it wasn’t great either, ya feel? So I made pancakes, and while they were good, it turns out I’m REALLY BAD at making pancakes lol.
> 
> Anyway, leave a kudo or a comment if you’d like! I haven’t posted any Batfam stuff before, so this is like a warmup before the big project I’m working on ;)


End file.
